History Matters

The women of Pitcairn Island were responsible for creating, maintaining, and passing on a number of traditions that were uniquely theirs. Historically, there voices have often been overshadowed by the story of the British men of the Bounty, with whom these women were associated. In 1789 the Bounty set sail from England, crewed by a group of young men, and captained by William Bligh. Their mission was to sail to Tahiti and retrieve breadfruit, to bring back to the West Indies as an economically efficient way to feed slaves. Unfortunately for the men on the Bounty, their journey was not a smooth one.
On their journey to Tahiti, the crew faced inclement weather conditions and illness, and ended up having to stay in Tahiti for five months before it was safe to set out again. During this time, many of the young men came to know the Oceanic women living on Tahiti and the surrounding islands. When they were finally able to set sail again, conditions on board the Bounty did not improve. Indeed, the following events suggest that they worsened. Disgruntled by Captain Bligh’s leadership, a mutiny was organised by Fletcher Christian, a crew member. Christian and his fellow mutineers sent Bligh and eighteen others adrift, and directed the ship back towards Tahiti.
When the group arrived back in Tahiti, they brought on board a number of women and a handful of men from Tahiti and the surrounding islands. While some accounts claim that these women came on board willingly, many suggest that they were captured by force. The British men and Oceanic women then made their way to Pitcairn Island, which was, in 1789, deserted. Pitcairn Island was to become, therefore, a cultural melting pot of sorts. The British and Tahitian cultural traditions mixed in such a way that a unique Pitcairn culture was born.
The community on Pitcairn Island in 1789 was a small one, and the community remains small today. For the people from Pitcairn, this often makes it easy to trace their lineage, and find a sense of pride that comes from both their British ancestors and their Tahitian mothers. Mauatua, for example, was one of the founding mothers of the Pitcairn community that exists today. She was the oldest woman brought from Tahiti, and she married Fletcher Christian, the leader of the mutineers. Later, she partnered with Edward Young, another mutineer, so many people from Pitcairn with the named Christian and Young can trace their ancestry to Mauatua.
Along with the other Tahitian women, Mauatua helped to bring the tradition of the tapa cloth to Pitcairn Island. The tapa is a type of cloth made by beating and decorating tree bark in very particular learned ways. When they arrived on Pitcairn, the Tahitian women found that there was a different variety of materials available to them for tapa-making, and so the practice evolved. The women used tapa for many day-to-day purposes, including clothing and bedding. The knowledge of tapa-making is passed down through the matrilineal line, meaning from woman to woman. Pitcairn tapa is found around the world today. Mauatua’s tapa is found in London, as is her great-granddaughter, Helena Beatrice Young’s, while Mauatua’s daughters, Polly and Dolly, made tapa that is found in New Zealand and Oxford. These pieces of tapa clearly demonstrate the matrilineal process, as they all resemble one another, being fine, pale pieces of cloth. The matrilineality of tapa leaves the power of cultural transference in the hands of the Oceanic women and their descendants, many of whom still practice, or are trying to revive the art of tapa-making today.

In 1790, eleven Tahitian women and a baby girl departed Tahiti, on board HMAV Bounty, on a journey that would see them settle on the remote pacific Island of Pitcairn. Where they, the women, would ultimately become the dominant agents in the development and creation of a new Anglo-Pacific society and culture. Accompanying them were nine English mutineers, seeking a secure and remote hideaway from the inevitable British Naval search party, with a further six Polynesian men along for adventure and a new life.
By the turn of the century in 1800, all the men except for John Adams were dead along with two of the founding women. Accidental death and disease accounting for a few of the deaths, the majority though were the result of murder and massacre as the European and Polynesian men fought each other over land rights and the favour of the women. Thus, at the start of the new millennium on Pitcairn there was one man, ten women and a growing herd of young children, who needed caring for.
Cleary, you would conclude that the major responsibility for raising and sustaining these children was going to fall to the women. Or so you would think. But somehow or other this logical and obvious conclusion has been subsumed by a Eurocentric male tradition that objectifies the Pitcairn women and denies them agency in the story.
At last the full story of the women of Pitcairn is being revealed in a fresh contemporary way that utilises the material heritage and culture that these women brought with them to Pitcairn and the unique tapa cloths that these women manufactured, designed and decorated on the Island. Cloths and designs that linked their past sustained their present and informs the future.
In this fresh social interpretation, of history, it is the tapa that become our primary source of information. We know the tapa was made in the traditional way, a method that would shortly fall into abeyance on Tahiti, as the influence of the arriving Western missionaries curtailed its use. Obviously, the missionaries dictates would have no effect on Pitcairn. In addition to clothing the new community the cloth would provide: bedding, blankets, towels, nappies, bandages. The women worked together collectively, free to chat and plan, passing on their oral history, songs and cultural traditions to the younger women who in their turn would pass it on to their daughters. On Pitcairn, the women added new designs, inspired by their new surroundings and experimented with new dyes and colours extracted from the vegetation on the island.
Whilst these women may not have been able to grant and give formal interviews to enhance the historical record. What they did leave behind, their unique tapa cloths, continue to give us a unique insight into their world, their social structures, culture and gifting practices. They were not objects their tapas gave them a voice and are continuing witness to the important role that the Pitcairn women played in the formation of a unique hybrid Polynesian society.

In 1789 one of the most famous mutinies in western naval history occurred. A ship named The Bounty, captained by William Bligh, experienced a bloodless and effective mutiny, which ended with Bligh and his supporters deposited into a small dinghy.
The root of the mutiny lay deep, but one of the instigating factors was an extended six month layover at Tahiti, during which the men of the Bounty struck up many short lived friendships and indulged in many of the luxuries available to them. Afterwards Bligh could not reconcile the discipline of the British Navy with the freedom the crew had enjoyed in Tahiti, and was soon deposed.
Historians and artists have debated the morality of William Bligh and mutineer leader Christian Fletcher, but that isn’t the focus of this exhibition.
In fact the only reason to mention the Bounty at all is so that you might understand how these mutineers returned to Tahiti, and why they might have been able to use the authority of the ship and their connection with William Bligh to convince several Tahitian Women and men to come with them to Pitcairn Island, a then uninhabited place far from the grasp of the British Navy.
Many other works of history and fiction have documented the fates of these men, and the consequences that some were forced to meet and that others avoided.
There are far fewer accounts about the women who accompanied the mutineers, who bore their children, suffered their abuses and helped to nurture Pitcairn Island into its future form. And so it is our aim to examine their role in the founding of Pitcairn Island and the ways in which they shaped its’ development and evolution.
We will establish a basic timeline of events, so that you might better understand the facts of history as they stand, and be able to apply the general details of the narrative to the other exhibits. We will also examine the Tapa cloth in detail, and explore its place in Pitcairn Island and its significance in broader pacific history. You will also be able to listen to an interview given by contemporary residents of Pitcairn Island, and to hear from the women of Pitcairn themselves what it means to be a resident of the island.
And finally, we will give you a crash course in Historiography, and teach you how to apply narratives of history to physical objects rather than literary sources, so that you might better understand how to analyse history.
This won’t be the last word on the subject, and it is our hope that this is the first of many examinations on the Women of the Bounty. And through this exhibition we might understand better how women are portrayed in historical accounts, and how we might focus on them. From its beginning to the present day, Pitcairn Island wouldn’t be the same without the often opposing forces of European colonisation and Tahitian culture, and now we get to see this clash up close.

“The mind is it’s own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, hell of heaven” -Milton.
Pitcairn Island. A place today with no airstrip, no medical or shipping services and no safe harbour. Who would be so possessed to travel to such an island? To travel to ‘paradise’, one must hitch a lift in a container vessel, travelling through the Pacific or embark on a thirty hour voyage by boat to the rugged lump of rock, situated between New Zealand and Chile.
Surely Heaven is closer?
For two centuries, this land has lured adventurers and rogues to explore its mystical land, ever since Fletcher Christian and his mutineers hid on Pitcairn from the British Navy exploring a place and people which were so remote (and still are geographically), lost in time and tradition. The island itself has believed to have been inhabited by Polynesians for hundreds of years, when Pitcairn was first stumbled upon by Captain Phillip Carteret aboard HMS Swallow in 1767. It was not until twenty-two years later when the HMS Bounty arrived to Pitcairn led by Christian…without Bligh!
Let us rewind back to 1789 and the events that led to the exploration of Pitcairn…

Continue reading “A Paradise Lost: Breadfruit Bligh and the plight of Pitcairn”